I Am A Man
by hookling
Summary: Edward's thoughts get the better of him and then Bella walks in...


It wasn't exactly obvious at first what had changed, but its presence still lingered in every moment that Bella and I spent together, like a returned friend that we both knew but were trying to ignore.

It was there as we were curled in front of Charlie's glinting flat-screen; Bella's arm pressed against my rigid hip, there as my fingers slithered over hers as I pushed one of her schoolbooks into her waiting hands, there, as I stood behind her in the grocery store as she paid for the weekly beer-and-steak supply for her father. My whole body seemed to align with hers, every point calling out for her so absolutely that I felt the shock trickle through me whenever I realised we weren't actually touching. Of course, it had always been this way. _Always_ being the time since the first delicious blush of Bella's cheek had introduced itself to me three autumns ago, forging my addiction and making me obsessed with they notion of calling this pale, beautifully erratic girl mine. _Always_, as my life before had very little meaning to me if I could not recall the feel of her fingers clutched between mine or the feel of her breath on my bottom lip as I pressed my mouth to hers in one of the chaste kisses I limited myself to give her.

Yet, something had changed. Of course the internal battle to me, had always existed in the way I forced myself to behave around her. The kissing, the touching, the undressing, all the things that Bella was good at, and all the things I denied her physically, whilst entertaining the ideas in my head. How many times, I had pushed her away firmly as she slipped her fingers beneath the band of my jeans. As she let out a nectarous breath of hot air as she opened her mouth to mine, seeking something she thought _she_ was the one that so desperately craved. Of course, in Bella's opinion, her delicious lapses of self-control were entirely down to her chaining to the human emotions still striding around her beautiful mind. She felt weaker for it. Embarrassed, even. How many times had I told her now that I thirsted after her body as frantically as she craved mine, no matter how often I forced myself to unlock her thin fingers from their clutching at my permanently arctic skin.

'I may not be human, but I am a man.' I had once said to her, many months ago as she was still trying to tame her imagination to the notion of what I was, and what it meant. She had blushed, this beautiful, glowing scarlet that had made my mouth water, whilst also stirring a flip of electricity to curse through my granite body that I had long since denied myself of ever experiencing. She had passed it off, rejected claims of my need for her physically as easily as the way she had refused the affections of every human male in this dreary town's vicinity. It was disgusting. Knowing the fantasies of every teenage boy in Forks was disturbing enough without them all pooling towards Bella, their overactive minds using her body, the way the sun kissed her hair as if even _it_ wanted her too, the sweep of her eyelashes framing her warm brown eyes, to satisfy themselves in a way so nauseating that it took everything I had not to simply break their legs with a slight shift of my weight in the hallway.

And yet, what I was doing was no better that the lust these human males felt for her. I wanted her, she wanted me; I had long since established that there was no conceivable way I could exist in a world that Isabella Swan's heart did not beat in. She had given up everything for me, yet I still denied her of the one thing we both so fiercely craved. It was just…

'Edward…?' Bella's voice pierced my thoughts and I turned my face to see her stood in the doorframe, a white cotton dress grazing delicately over her hips. 'You look…um. A bit lost?'

She clicked the door shut, yawned and pushed her skinny fingers through the mass of her chestnut hair, and for a moment she looked illuminated by the best cinematographer in the world, the setting sun dancing over her figure and planting butterfly kisses across her shoulders. She was beautiful.

'I'm done, _completely done_,' She commented on the barbeque her father had commandeered her into hosting. 'Who knew Charlie _had_ so much family that I didn't actually know existed. And that's not even starting on their freakishly huge appetites…Thanks for coming. Glad we're done now, huh…' she babbled on, tripping on her last words as she saw my expression, and what there must have been in it.

'Oh!' she exhaled as I gathered her petite body into my arms and against my chest, knocking over the glass of water that stood on her nightstand. I didn't care. 'I missed you,' I exhaled, my voice sounding throaty and deeper than usual as my mouth hovered in an almost-kiss above hers. Bella registered the words I didn't need to say and clumsily pushed her mouth up to mine, my lips moulded against hers, hot and wet and firm and soft and fierce and all the things I usually stopped. I should stop, but Bella's bottom lip seared as I caught it between mine in a sucking kiss, and she let out a wild gasp as I skittered my fingers down her soft back, stopping just above where her ivory dress had bunched up around the creamy skin of her thighs.

'What are we doing?' she breathed, her eyes piercing mine as she simultaneously dragged her teeth over her bottom lip. I licked it.

'I don't know. Just do what feels good.'

'You'll only make me stop.'

Her eyes turned ochre then, almost like mine, and I knew then that nothing was going to stop. I turned us over so that she was caught between my chest and the soft bed I pressed her into, and again caught her bottom lip in my mouth, making her whimper beneath me deliciously and nudge her flat palms into my chest. She opened her mouth to gasp, and kept it open, testing me, waiting, entirely not expecting the feel of my tongue as I touched the tip of hers delicately. It tasted like nothing I'd ever know to exist. Why hadn't we done this before? Carefully, I slid my tongue into her mouth, causing a groan to sing from her chest as she registered what I was doing, even if the reasons for it escaped her. We kissed for minutes, long, wet kisses that tasted of spring and the sun and everything I'd ever wanted to do to her.

Had I not been so enthralled in new sensation I was finally allowing myself to give to her, I would have noticed how Bella had begun to sensually writhe beneath me. Her hands began to fiercely scamper across my chest, pressing over the skin like she was almost trying to get to some kind of haven inside there. She stopped at the lowest button of my shirt, her fingers trembling as she slipped it out of its hole and softly traced the small slither of my stomach it exposed to her. I reached down, intending to help her shaking hands complete their intended course, but she pushed mine away with a husky 'No…' against my panting mouth. After a few agonizing minutes, her small hands tenderly swept over the skin of my shoulders as she pushed my shirt over them, flinging it on the floor and immediately dropping her mouth to my neck.

'Bella…' I shuddered, as her mouth trailed down my chest, dropping dewy kisses until she reached my belt, her fingers circling my bellybutton playfully before twining themselves in the fair hair that trailed up from inside my jeans. I heard a giggle fizzle out in her throat and pulled her face back up to mine, licking her neck as I breathed questions in her ear.

'You're just so…normal, Edward…' she said, her eyes dropping to my belt, a radiant smile dancing from each corner of her mouth. And I was happy, pleased that the appearance and feel of my own body, through its everlasting coldness and inhumane actions, was good to her….

'_I may not be human, but I am a man…' _Bella echoed, and I smiled against her lips.

I pressed my mouth into the hollow behind her ear and stalked down her neck with my lips, stopping in the dip between her collarbones and sucking there. She moaned, a deep sound that made her sound more like a woman than the blushing girl that I was so addicted to, and the electric current in my chest somersaulted through my abdomen before shuddering to a stop somewhere in my groin.

Panting again, I gripped the flimsy material of her soft summer dress in between my fingers and pushed it up off her thighs and under her breasts, unveiling her hips bones delicately disappearing underneath her black underwear. She was beautiful. A tremble fluttered in my chest as I took in her graceful body, the curve of her hips arching entrancingly into the flat plane of her stomach. I left sloppy kisses over each hip as I moved to the creamy skin of her abdomen, laying my cheek against it and letting out a whine as the perfume of her sweet body whirled around my nose, drowning my mind of anything that wasn't the beautiful siren in front of me. I couldn't breathe for the air I didn't need. I moved my cheek up a few inches to the very centre of her middle, and for a moment I imagined a child there, my cold face singing to _our_ baby as she nurtured it inside her. Something exploded in my chest, elation, desire, urgency, _whatever_, as I swept the rest of the dress up off her body and threw it on the floor. It was swiftly united with her material of her bra, which I discarded with inhumane speed that Bella didn't seem to mind.

I mindlessly attacked the valley of her breasts with my mouth as they pushed out towards me, Bella whimpering as she thread her fingers through my hair, pulling and stroking it with vehement desire. I enclosed my mouth around the bud of her breast, sucking and kissing it with shameless craving as Bella gasped and squirmed lusciously underneath me, her fingers hooking under my jeans and caressing the skin there. I wanted them off. I wanted to feel her there, touch her, I needed my jeans off. I guided her delicate wrists across to my belt once more, where she tantalizingly began to stroke the ignited flare that had begun to burn there. I moaned into her mouth, causing her to desperately undo the snap of my belt and push the material off over my hips and down my thighs, impatiently giving a very uncharacteristic huff as the fabric bunched around my knees. I kicked them off, before hooking my thumbs beneath the thin cotton of her underwear as she peeled down mine with equal ardency.

'I need you…' she panted, as my hands clutched her hips, and the current flipped again, setting the burn below my hips ablaze. I clutched tighter, and suddenly a white burst of disgrace exploded in front of my vision and I raised myself off her. Ashamed, I sat back, pressing myself against the end of her bed and dropping my eyes guiltily. 'Bella…I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We shouldn't… I have…I'm disgusting. I can't…I should have known, you're so delicate…' I covered my face with my arm, tears that couldn't fall pricking behind my eyes.

'Edward Cullen.' She said, her voice huskier than I had ever heard it be before and her eyes alight with something I didn't recognise. A fine sheet of sweat radiated across her perfect body, she was the most glorious thing in my world, and she was glowing. Glowing for me.

I couldn't.

'Edward.' She repeated, her face now torturously close to mine, her breath pooling great mouthfuls of sweet nectar into my face, so close I could just… just what? A horrific image of her body laid out beneath mine bolted through my mind, but this time her eyes were not glowing, her skin not radiating, she was lifeless and dull…broken as I felt the satisfaction that had been building through my marble body for the entire evening erupt through me. Concurrently, I saw the vision of complete horror ghost across my features, I would damage this beautiful thing, and I would break her…

'Edward.' She uttered for the final time, her eyes silently pleading with mine as she brushed one fingertip over my stomach, tightening the betraying flow of current that was emanated entirely from the feel of her. 'I need this, I need _you_,' she repeated, her eyes now glassy with a single tear that threatened to spill over, a symbol of my incapability and undeserving of her.

'_Please.'_

Something snapped. My lips came down hard on hers and I crushed her back down against the bed, her legs curving to bend around my sides as I lay inbetween the very essence of _her. _She gasped wildly for oxygen as I thrust my tongue deep into her mouth, her lips moving ablaze against mine, her hips forcefully pushing up against my lower body, eliciting a guttural growl that would have sounded more natural on an animal.

And then it was black and white and everything and nothing at once, as our bodies entwined together finally. I couldn't remember, I couldn't think, years and years of studying and repeating and living and existing, mindlessly, how could I ever have existed without this, this…

'I love you.'


End file.
